Magic holds the title of "Most Played Trading Card Game," and is currently published in English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.[3][4] Digitally, the game can be played in Magic Online and MTG Arena.

Within the game of Magic, each player takes the role of a planeswalker, a powerful, magic-wielding being.[5]

The game is commonly played with two players, but can be played with more. Each player uses their own deck, which may be constructed from cards they previously owned, or from a limited pool of cards at an event. There are several ways of winning the game, the most common being reducing your opponent to 0 life, from a starting total of 20.[6][7]

Magic is a game of hidden information, meaning that each player knows secrets that the other players do not.[9][10] By contrast, some other games, such as chess, expose the entire game state to all players. Being forced to guess from imperfect information, combined with the inherent randomness in the game (such as from shuffling), makes finding perfect or ideal strategies impractical, if not impossible, and tests a variety of cognitive skills.[11][12][13][14] This is compounded by the continual addition of new cards, which forces regular reevaluation of deckbuilding and gameplay strategies, and leads to an ever-shifting metagame as players adapt.

Magic recognizes five colors for mechanical purposes: white, blue, black, red, and green. Each card may be any of these colors, or colorless. A card may also be multicolored, and a hybrid subset of multicolored cards offer additional flexibility.

Each color has characteristic strategies, mechanics, and philosophies. These properties derive from commonplace associations with the colors themselves, and from the practical considerations of creating good gameplay. The "color pie", or color wheel, is a mnemonic device and creative tool based on the ring of colored dots on the back of Magic cards. For any particular color, the color pie uses adjacency on that ring to split the other four colors into a pair of neighboring allied colors and a more distant pair of enemy colors.[18]

Mana is the primary resource for playing spells. Mana is typically drawn from lands (like the basic lands Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest) but it can also be generated by non-land permanents and spells. Players choose whatever cards they want. In order for that to work, the game needs some way to make as many cards as possible matter. By making spells have a cost, the designers are able to make different cards important at different parts of the game. Because of this, each card now has a different reason to be considered for a deck. This diversity of card usage is a key factor in making the entire trading card game work.[19]

The first Magiccore set, retroactively labelled Alpha, was created by Dr. Richard Garfield, bought by Wizards of the Coast, and released in August 1993.[20][21] High demand led to a second Beta print run two months later, followed by a rebranded Unlimited Edition. When Richard first made the game, he called it Magic. The name was too basic to trademark so the name was changed to Mana Clash.[22] Everyone kept calling it Magic so they looked into what they needed to do to call it Magic. The answer was to add something to it to make it more unique. Richard chose “The Gathering” as a sub name signifying the beginning, as the plan was to keep changing the sub names. The next version would be called Magic: Ice Age.[23] This idea was however quickly abandoned.[24]

The full, official rules for Magic change regularly with the release of new products. Most of these changes simply define and enable new mechanics, though major revisions have occurred infrequently, such as the 6th Edition update in 1999 and the Grand Creature Type Update in 2007. Proclamations that a new update will finally "kill" the game are common.[25][26] Despite this, the game has flourished, with repeated statements that the most recent large set has become the best-selling set of all time.[27][28]

Mark Rosewater attributes the game's success, in part, to three core concepts introduced by Richard Garfield at the game's inception: the trading card game, the color wheel, and the mana system.[15][29] Additionally, since 2008, Wizards of the Coast has devoted efforts to acquiring new players.[30] Such efforts include a shift in game design to mitigate complexity creep, structured play opportunities to introduce women players to Magic,[31] and more in-game representation of women[32][33] and minorities.[34][35][36] In spite of these efforts, the percentage of the player base that identifies as female is currently in the mid-twenties, down from 38% in the recent past.[37]

The DCI (formerly, Duelists' Convocation International) is the official sanctioning body for competitive play in Magic: The Gathering. The DCI provides game rules, tournament operating procedures, and other materials to private tournament organizers and players. It also operates a judge certification program to provide consistent rules enforcement and promote fair play. Wizards of the Coast and the DCI control the list of banned and restricted cards, which are considered too strong in particular tournaments.

In order to play in sanctioned events, players must register for a free membership and receive a DCI number. The DCI maintains a global player ratings database using the Elo rating system (Planeswalker Points) and members have access to their entire tournament history online. If a member commits frequent or flagrant rules infractions, his or her membership can be suspended for variable amounts of time depending on the severity, from one month to a lifetime.

Tournament decks in general must have at least 60 cards. A deck may have no more than four copies of an individual card, besides basic lands which it may have any number. If a sideboard is used, it may contain no more than 15 cards.

Most games of Magic, especially casual ones, are Constructed formats, where the decks are prepared by the players before they arrive at game. There are also multiple formats that are played with constructed decks in DCI-sanctioned tournaments:

In the Standard format, players play with a deck of at least 60 cards from the most recent core set, the most recent fully released block, and the block that is currently being released.[41]

Vintage is the oldest format in the game, simply because it allows players the ability to use almost any card from any black or white bordered set.

In the Legacy format, cards from all sets are playable, though many of the cards which are restricted in vintage are banned in legacy.

Modern is currently the newest eternal format in the game and bridges the gap between standard and legacy. The card pool in this format is much smaller compared to Legacy and Vintage. The card pool in this format encompasses all sets from Eighth Edition on.

In the Limited format, players do not play with decks they built ahead of time, but play with decks of cards from sealed booster packs, which are built at the beginning of a limited tournament before play begins. In limited formats, the minimum deck size is 40 cards. Generally, 17-19 lands and 21-23 spells are played, but there is some variance in this aspect. This format is favored by some, as it allows all players, no matter the size of their collection, to have an equal chance at doing well in a tournament.

In the Draft format, each participating player is seated around a table, usually of eight players, and is given three sealed booster packs. Each player opens the first of their packs, chooses a card from it, and places the chosen card face down on the table in front of them. The remaining cards in the pack are passed to the left, and players repeat this process with the pack just passed to them, until all the cards are chosen. The same is done with the second pack, this time passing to the right, and with the third pack, passing left again. Each player then builds a deck using the 45 cards they chose from the booster packs. Sanctioned drafts can be run with any number of boosters from any set, as long as each drafter receives the same product. The most common drafts are from the most recent block.

Sealed Deck is a common format used at prerelease tournaments. In this format, everyone is given the same amount of product (e.g., six booster packs). From that pool of cards, and adding in as many basic land as desired, each player must build a deck of at least 40 cards. Any opened cards not put in the main deck count as part of the sideboard. In sealed deck, the skill is making the best out of what you're given.[42]

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